WebProNews

During a live dialogue with MTV viewers, Presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged to support Net Neutrality if elected president, and to appoint a pro-neutrality Federal Communications Commission.

CORRECTION: Earlier, at the time slated for webcast, Obama mentioned nothing about it, and the question was not asked. Perhaps they meant Central or Mountain Time, but Obama did not dodge the question.

A question was posed by Joe Niederberger via 10Questions.com, and was voted up as an important issue. MTV said they would relay Niederberger's question to Obama during a live dialog. Niederberger asked:

"Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to re-instate Net Neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint FCC commissioners that support open Internet principles like Net Neutrality?"

Obama gave a resounding reply:

"The answer is yes! I am a strong supporter of net neutrality. And in case folks weren't following exactly the question I just want to make sure everybody's clear.

 "Right now the speed with which and quality of your downloads or links are the same if you’re going to the CNN or Time Warner website as if you were going to barackobama.com. But what you've been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and portals through which you're getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different websites and webcasts. So now what you'd have is, potentially, you could you could get much better quality from the Fox News site and you'd be getting rotten service from some mom and pop site. And that, I think, destroys one of the best things about the Internet -- which is
that there is this incredible equality there."

"And people, if you've got a good idea and get a great website -- Facebook, MySpace, Google might not have been started if you did not have a level playing field for whoever has the best idea. And I want to maintain that basic principle in how the Internet functions and as president I'm going to make sure that is the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward."

Watch the video: